October had arrived, and with it, a relentless, punishing workload that had finally pushed Alex to the breaking point. The cool, crisp autumn air outside his window was a mocking reminder of a world he was no longer a part of, a world of football games and homecoming dances and the simple, uncomplicated rhythms of a normal teenage life.
His bedroom had become a pressure cooker, the four walls a cage built from his own ambition and responsibility. He sat at his desk, surrounded by the towering architecture of his many lives. On his main computer screen, a complex music cue for the film score stared back at him, a dense forest of notes and timecodes that had begun to look like a foreign, indecipherable language. To his left, a stack of legal documents for the newly formed Leo Martinez Foundation, the charitable arm of Echo Chamber, waited for his signature. To his right, his phone buzzed with a fresh chain of texts from Claire about an upcoming, multi-city international promo tour for his own album.
The ghost was in overdrive, its processing power running at one hundred and ten percent. It was calmly, efficiently multitasking, categorizing, and strategizing, a perfect, tireless machine of productivity. The string arrangement for the chase sequence needs more harmonic tension. The foundation's tax-exempt status must be finalized by Q4. The flight schedule for the Berlin press junket conflicts with the deadline for the final score delivery.
But the sixteen-year-old boy, the one whose body was actually sitting in the chair, was suffocating.
He stared at the musical notation on the screen, his mind a complete and utter blank. He knew, on a technical level, what the notes were. He understood the theory behind them. But the connection, the spark, the emotional current that had always allowed him to translate the symbols into feeling, was gone. He'd hit a wall. It was the quiet, creeping, and terrifying first stage of burnout, a feeling the ghost remembered all too well from its own doomed future. The engine was overheating. The system was about to crash.
A sudden, powerful, and almost violent urge washed over him. He needed to escape. He needed, just for a few hours, to not be Alex Vance, the CEO, the Grammy-winning icon, the grieving philanthropist. He needed to be just… a kid. A normal kid, on a normal Saturday, with nothing to do.
This is an inefficient use of time, the ghost's voice noted, its tone a cold, clinical disapproval. The schedule is already compressed. A four-hour break will create a significant workflow bottleneck.
But for the first time in a long time, the boy's exhaustion was stronger than the ghost's logic. The need for air was more powerful than the need for efficiency.
He pushed his chair back from the desk with a sudden, decisive scrape. He stood up and walked to the window, leaving the glowing screens and their silent, screaming demands behind him. He needed out.
His first thought was Billie and Finneas. But he knew they were deep in their own creative bubble, locked in Finneas's studio, meticulously crafting the final tracks for Billie's EP. The work was intense, important. He couldn't interrupt. He didn't want to bring his own frayed, burnt-out energy into their sacred creative space.
Then, a different thought surfaced, a memory of a quiet conversation in a soundproofed lounge, of a shared, conspiratorial eye-roll on a chaotic commercial set. Olivia. He remembered the easy, uncomplicated nature of their talks. She was the one person in this strange new stratosphere of his life who didn't seem to want anything from him. She wasn't a partner he had to lead, an employee he had to manage, or a journalist he had to charm. She was just… a person. A person who got it.
The impulse was sudden and uncalculated. He pulled out his phone, his thumb flying across the screen, typing out a message before the ghost could veto the idea as unproductive. The text was impulsive, slightly awkward, a genuine shot in the dark.
Alex:Hey. Random question. Are you by any chance free today? And not in an 'industry-person-asking-to-network' way.
He hit send and was immediately hit with a flicker of normal, teenage social anxiety. Maybe it was weird. She was a huge TV star; she was probably busy with a dozen more important things. Maybe she would think he was just trying to leverage their brief connection. He almost sent a follow-up text to say 'never mind.'
But before he could, his phone buzzed with a reply. It had come back almost instantly, and the message was pure, unfiltered Olivia, a burst of vibrant, kinetic energy in text form.
Olivia:Omg YES. I have the whole day off. I was just about to lose my mind re-watching old sitcoms. Save me! What did you have in mind?
He read the text, and a wave of relief so profound it almost made him dizzy washed over him. She was free. She wanted to hang out. And then, a second, more complicated wave of panic hit him. He had been so focused on the act of escaping that he hadn't actually thought about where he wanted to escape to. He had no plan.
He just wanted something normal. What did normal kids do on a Saturday? What did he used to do? His mind flashed back to a dozen lazy, uncomplicated Saturdays with Leo, days that were blessedly free of any kind of schedule or ambition.
He typed back, the idea feeling both nostalgic and wonderfully simple.
Alex:Honestly? I have no idea. Something that doesn't involve a red carpet or a conference call. I was thinking maybe an old-school arcade? And burgers? I know a place.
He waited for her reply, half-expecting her to find the idea childish, or for her publicist to veto it as not being on-brand. But her response came back in seconds, a string of texts that were practically vibrating with enthusiasm.
Olivia:An arcade and burgers sounds like HEAVEN.
Olivia:A thousand times yes.
Olivia:Send me the address. This is officially the best day ever.
He read her replies, and a genuine, unforced smile spread across his face, the first one he had felt all morning. The crushing, suffocating weight on his chest lifted, just slightly. The ghost was silent, its objections rendered moot. The numbers on the screen, the contracts on the desk, the deadlines on the whiteboard—they all faded into the background, their power temporarily broken.
He wasn't CEO Alex. He wasn't Grieving Alex. He wasn't Composer Alex.
He was just Alex, a sixteen-year-old kid who was about to go play video games and eat a burger with a new friend. And it felt like the most important, most vital, and most necessary thing in the entire world.